Despite vaccine, Barber IndyCar race to sell limited tickets

“We’re making our plan, basically, with the assumption that people that haven’t been vaccinated are those planning on coming to our event,” the president and CEO of Bruno Event Team that operates the Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama at Barber Motorsports Park, Gene Hallman told IndyStar Wednesday. “And we really have to make this spring event work.

“So sitting here now, it’s pretty clear our ticket supply is not going to be able to support the demand.”

Hallman said his team doesn’t presently have a target date to set fan attendance limits, though they’ll need more than a month’s lead time from their April 11 race date to properly market and push ticket sales, as well as give sponsors and teams a chance to plan their hospitality set-ups.

“This will be our biggest challenge, far and away,” Hallman said of April’s race. “It’s all lacking any clarity about what we’ll be able to do, how many people we can have and how many of them can be in hospitality. And these numbers, it makes it hard for any public health officials to give you what you’re looking for. There’s no magic formula.

“I thought last year was going to be the year of uncertainty and unknowns, but that seems to be case this year, too. About the only thing I can say with a high degree of certainty is we’re going to have a race.”